Why does society have such an obsession With the killers?
There is something very unsettling about the way that society remembers murderers. We remember their names, know about their childhood, and analyze each possible motive. We sit down for hours on end to watch documentaries about them, listen to their stories in podcasts on a long drive, and spend days trying to understand what made them capable of committing the act they did. But how often does society remember the names of the people whose lives they took?
Somewhere within the news break and trial, the person responsible for the tragedy becomes more interesting than the person who experienced it.
Think about some of the most infamous serial killers. Names like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer are known throughout households. Stories like theirs have become inspirations for multiple documentaries, movies, and other online platforms. Meanwhile, their victims remain an unfamiliar appearance to the public.
Why Serial Killers Become Media Celebrities
And maybe that is what the most disturbing part of society’s fascination with true crime is.
People spend so much time trying to analyze the people responsible for taking lives, that they forget to acknowledge the lives that were actually taken. It is well-known that curiosity is hard to push to the side. Humans are naturally drawn to things that they fail to understand, especially when they are things that we challenge to believe about morality. Here, explanations are not perceived as a want but a need. People feel the need to know about why people do what they do and how somebody could commit such a cruel act. Maybe by understanding the killer, people begin to believe that they can recognize the warning signs and protect themselves.
But being curious should never come at the expense of having compassion for those who have been affected.
There is a clear difference between studying criminal behavior and glorifying it. There is that difference between telling a story to educate others and telling one just because it attracts an audience.
Each victim had a life before becoming a small part in a true crime story. They had a favorite color, memories, people they cared about, and plans that they never got to start or finish. They were somebody’s child, partner, sibling, classmate, and friend. Their existence is so much deeper than the worst thing to happen to them.
The solution isn’t to stop discussing criminals or the psychology behind their actions. Those discussions have important values and details that need to be further analyzed. Instead, it is worth questioning whose story receives the most attention and why.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about true crime isn’t what people are watching, but who the public has chosen to watch. Victims deserve to be remembered as an individual and not as a piece of evidence that belongs to someone else’s crime scene. The crime may have ended their lives, but human obsession should not be the reason we erase their identities.
The killer may have written their final chapter, but that does not mean that they deserve to be the main character. What if the final chapter of your life belonged to somebody else?